- Most of the time when you hear people talkabout big data, they're talking about it withinthe commercial setting about how businesses can usebig data in advertising or marketing strategies.But one really important place that big datais also used is for consumers, and what's funnyabout this is that while the data is thereand the algorithms are there and as incrediblysophisticated processing it's nearly invisible.The results are so clean they give you just alittle piece of information, but exactly what you need.

What I want to do is show you some commonapplications of big data for consumersthat you may be using already withoutbeing aware of the sophistication ofthe big data analysis that's going into it.The first one is if you have an Apple iPhoneor iPad is what Siri can do.So for instance, aside from saying what'sthe weather like, and Siri actually knowswhat it is you mean, and where you are,and what time you're talking about, it can do thingslike look for restaurants of a particular kindof food and see if they have reservations available.

It can do an enormous amount of thingsthat requires the recommendation of other people,awareness of your locations, awareness ofthe changes over time of whatis most preferable for people.Another one is Yelp.A lot of people use this to find a restaurant,and again, it draws on millions and millionsof reviews from users and from other sourcesto make a very small recommendation.Here I'm searching for Thai food in Carpinteria,California, which is where Lynda.com is located.

I've got Siam Elephant and Your Place Restaurantas my first two hits.The next one, you might be familiarwith recommendation engines.This is an idea of software that is able to makea specific suggestion to you.Yelp is an example, but people are more familiarwith things like movies, and books, and music.Here's my Spotify account, and Spotify knows whatI listen to when I'm on Spotify, and what I listento all the way through, what I add to my list,what I skip through, and it's able to make specificsuggestions to help me find new artiststhat I wouldn't otherwise know about.

I love some of the stuff that Spotify comes up with.Similarly, Amazon.com makesrecommendations for books.For instance, here's a book, Principles of Big Data,one of my favorites, by Jules Berman,and if you scroll down you'll see that theyhave a list of other books that are recommended.This is generated by Amazon's recommendationengine, and you see several other bookson big data, and in fact, it's a great list,I own about half of them.It's the same general principle here.

A lot of people use Netflix to get movies.Netflix makes specific suggestionsfor other movies you might like.What's interesting is that a few years agothey had a major contest called the Netflix Prizewhere they wanted to see if anybody could improvethe accuracy of their predictions,meaning would you actually like this.If they could improve those predictions by 10%it was a million dollar prize and it wasincredibly sophisticated analysis that wentinto this, but the end result againis a very simple thing, you get recommendeda hand full of movies, and usuallyyou pick one and you like it.

In another context there's the app calledNeighborland, which is designed to help youcollaborate with people to make your citywork a little bit better.That's a simple goal, but what Neighborlanduses is photos, and data, and APIs from Twitter,and Google Maps, and Instagram, and agenciesthat report on real estate parcels, it usestransit systems, it uses three one one complaints,an enormous set of data that really highlightsthe variety of big data.The other ones, for instance, with Spotify and Yelp,show the volume, but this one shows the varietyof integrating data from so many different placesand so many different formats to help peoplecollaborate on something simple about workingtogether to improve their neighborhood.

Finally, the last one I want to show youis Google Now, and what Google Now does is itactually makes recommendations before you askfor them, especially when it's linked up to yourcalendar and it's linked up to the locationsensing on your phone.It knows where you are, it knows where you needto be, and it can tell you about things liketraffic or the weather before you even ask for it,and this is based on, again, an enormous amountof information about the kinds of informationpeople search for, and it provides itin a sort of preemptive manner.

So for consumers, big data plays an enormous rolein providing valuable services, but again,with the irony that it operates invisiblyby taking a huge amount of information fromseveral different sources and distilling itinto just two or three thingsthat give you what you need.

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Author

Released

10/20/2014

Big data is big news. But what is big data, and how do we use it? Simply put, big data is data that, by virtue of its velocity, volume, or variety (the three Vs), cannot be easily stored or analyzed with traditional methods. Spreadsheets and relational databases just don't cut it with big data. In this course, Barton Poulson tells you the methods that do work, introducing all the techniques and concepts involved in capturing, storing, manipulating, and analyzing big data, including data mining and predictive analytics. He explains big data's relationship to data science, statistics, and programing; its uses in marketing, scientific research, and tools like Amazon's recommendation engine; and the ethical issues that lie behind its use.

Lynda.com is a PMI Registered Education Provider. This course qualifies for professional development units (PDUs). To view the activity and PDU details for this course, click here.The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Topics include:

What makes big data "big"

Understanding how big data impacts consumers, businesses, and research